PARIS FASHION WEEK

Name: Paris Fashion Week
Start: 2027-03-01
End: 2027-03-09
Location: Paris

March and September · Paris · Nine Days · Since 1973 · Fashion

By invitation · Arranged for members who are asked

A long line of models in tweed, pearls and sequins walking in single file under the iron galleries of the Grand Palais at Paris Fashion Week — I · The Grand Palais

Dates: 1 to 9 March 202727 September to 5 October 2027
WhereParis
DressLounge suit
AdmissionBy invitation of the host
The weatherIn March Paris reaches about 13°C by day and 6°C at night, and rain falls on about one day in three.
The tableThe Court dines afterwards at Caviar Kaspia, 17 place de la Madeleine, Paris (caviarkaspia.com).
In companyA member who holds an invitation tells the Secretary, and the Court brings its members together where it can.RSVP tells the Secretary that a member means to attend. Send passes the engagement’s name, its date and the address of its page to whomever the reader chooses, or, on a computer, copies the address; the Court itself sends and keeps nothing.RSVP

Paris Fashion Week shows last, early in March and again at the end of September, and it is the week the other three are arranged around. Some seventy runway shows and thirty presentations.

Every seat is given. There are no tickets.

Models passing along a pale runway beneath an enormous suspended sculpture of mirrors and neon tubes at Paris Fashion Week — II · The Light Rig

The Battle

Paris had been the capital of fashion since Charles Frederick Worth opened a house there in the 1850s, and by 1973 nobody in Paris thought the matter was open.

That November the Palace of Versailles needed sixty million dollars of repairs the French government would not pay for. An American publicist named Eleanor Lambert proposed a fundraiser: five French houses against five American ones, on one stage, in front of seven hundred people.

Lambert had invented New York Fashion Week thirty years earlier, when Paris was occupied and the American press could not travel. The French side was organised by Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, who secured the president’s approval.

France fielded Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Ungaro, Cardin and Dior. America fielded de la Renta, Halston, Blass, Anne Klein and Stephen Burrows, all of them Lambert’s clients and most of them regarded in Paris as makers of sportswear.

The French staged elaborate sets. The American scenery arrived and did not fit the stage. They went on with recorded music, pools of light and the choreography they had, and they brought ten Black models, which that room had not seen before.

They took the evening. Women’s Wear Daily put it on the front page: the Americans came, they sewed, they conquered.

It is the night the city stopped being French fashion and started being world fashion, and Paris has been the stronger for it since.

A model in a cropped leather waistcoat and torn, faded jeans stands in a white, daylit room of glazed doors at Didu’s spring–summer 2027 presentation at Paris Fashion Week — III · The White Room

The Position

The first formal Paris Fashion Week was held in October 1973, weeks before Versailles, when the federation grouped couture, ready-to-wear and menswear into a single organised showing for the first time.

Paris shows last of the four by design. New York, then London, then Milan, then Paris. Which means the Paris collections are seen against everything already shown, and a house that intends to say something about the season must say it here or not at all.

The body that runs it is the same one that governs couture, and it was founded in 1868. It has been deciding who shows in Paris for a hundred and fifty years.

The opening look of Chanel’s spring–summer 2027 show, a white knitted slip dress, on the reflecting runway beneath a flight of lit birds at Paris Fashion Week — IV · Chanel: The Opening Look

What to Know

March shows autumn and winter. Late September into October shows spring and summer.

The calendar is published a few weeks ahead and not before.

Shows are held in the Louvre, the Grand Palais, hôtels particuliers, museums, and occasionally somewhere nobody expects. The venue is a statement and is read as one.

Nine days is long. Nobody sees everything and nobody attempts it.

The mistake is calling Paris the most commercial of the four. It is the most consequential, which is a different thing. Paris decides what selling will look like in eighteen months.

Questions

When is Paris Fashion Week in 2027?

The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode lists the womenswear Fall/Winter 2027-2028 shows from Monday 1 to Tuesday 9 March 2027, and Spring/Summer 2028 from Monday 27 September to Tuesday 5 October 2027. Menswear is shown separately, from 19 to 24 January and from 22 to 27 June 2027.

Can anyone attend Paris Fashion Week?

Not the shows. On the Fédération’s official calendar every show and presentation is marked as by invitation, and no tickets are sold. Many shows are streamed live or released afterwards as a film.

Is there a dress code for Paris Fashion Week?

The Fédération publishes no dress code for guests at the shows or the presentations. The Court wears a lounge suit to the week’s appointments.

How can you watch Paris Fashion Week?

The official calendar marks which shows are streamed live and which are released later as a film. In September 2026 Christian Dior, Maison Margiela and Saint Laurent were among the houses streaming live. The calendar is published on fhcm.paris before each season.

A Chanel look, a black tweed jacket and skirt, on the reflecting runway at Paris Fashion Week — V · Chanel: The Reflecting Runway

The Court

Paris Fashion Week is not the Court’s own, and the Court will not pretend it can seat a member at a show. Those rooms belong to the houses.

What the Court arranges is the week around them: showroom appointments, the presentations that welcome guests, and the tables where the collections are argued over. Getting there, where to stay, and the table afterwards are sought on a member’s behalf, as for the Court’s other engagements.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.